Friday, 20 January 2012

Yesterday was a late night event at the Wellcome Collection. On arrival I was greeted by a large crowd of people listening to the Hot Potato Syncopators ukulele band who were having a great time. I collected a programme which itself was a miniature 3inches tall.

I headed into the basement to get tickets for the talks by Author Steven Connor and Psychiatrist Isobel Heyman but despite the ticket office only opening 5 minutes before, all the tickets were gone. So I headed up the the first floor where most of the events were happening. The first floor of the Wellcome Collection houses their medical exhibits so the event was intermingled with giant sculptures of bodies, wierd bottles and masses of books. One exhibit was a mechanical eye that opened when you walked close to it (one for Poter and Jenkinson)

Over in the Forum area the people from Pestival had done an excellent job of creating a sideshow atmosphere. The first stall I visited was hosted by the entomologist and flea expert Amoret Whitaker. She'd brought some dressed fleas along from deep in the archives of the Natural History museum and we got to look at them under a microscope.

Further around the room was Tim Cockerill he'd brought along his collection of flea items including some impressive chariots, more pulgas vestidas (dressed fleas) and many pamphlets, postcards and showbills from around the world.

Tim had also filmed a short clip for the event telling you about flea circuses

The first showing for the flea circus was packed out. Whilst I was waiting I took the opportunity to sketch up some designs for an improved flea chariot based on what I'd seen. I left it on the wall of thoughts so that others might take inspiration.
The nanotechnolgy did not interest me that much so I visited the Medicine Man room which hosted some Bonsai and Zoe Hughes who was painting names of grains of rice. The Medicine Man collection is a permenant exhibit with some strange items such as a shrunken head. There was obviously a law put in place for importing shrunken heads at some point as the label made very clear that it had been brought into the country some time back.

I got to see second performance of the flying starts flea circus. Before the show I had a chat and looked at their flea circus hall of fame, classic moments from flea history such as Vivaldi and the four flea sons and a member of the Fleamasons.

The flea show was excellent, a wide range of acts from around the globe all performed in an entertaining style. One of the trainee fleas had a bit of an accident with his trick and one of the props went up in flames but thanks the Mama Mia and her fire engine it was all put out without any issue. The audience loved the show and afterwards I bumped into a new flea trainer who was quizzing Michael for techniques for building props.

All in all an excellent evening, to finish things off I had to exit via the gift shop, there was a wide range of gifts and books including some on miniatures which I though was good, although it could have been a co-incidence.